Use of a Respondent-Generated Personal Code for Matching Anonymous Adolescent Surveys in Longitudinal Studies

Purpose: Research on sensitive and private topics relies heavily on self-reported responses. Social desirability bias may reduce the accuracy and reliability of self-reported responses. Anonymous surveys appear to improve the likelihood of honest responses. A challenge with prospective research is maintaining anonymity while linking individual surveys over time. Methods: We have tested a secret code method in which participants create their own code based on eight questions that are not expected to change. Results: In an ongoing middle school trial, 95.7% of follow-up surveys are matched to a baseline survey after changing up to two-code variables. The percentage matched improves by allowing up to four changes (99.7%). Conclusions: The use of a secret code as an anonymous identifier for linking baseline and follow-up surveys is feasible for use with adolescents. While developed for violence prevention research, this method may be useful with other sensitive health behavior research. (C) 2017 Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. All rights reserved.